Read a passport
An electronic passport keeps its photo page on a chip: the name, the number, the dates and the photograph. Hex NFC reads that chip and lays out what it found on one screen. The chip opens only to three details printed inside the passport. The app asks for those after the first tap finds the chip. It holds the result for as long as the screen is open, and no longer.
Before you start you need the app installed from the App Store on an iPhone that reads NFC tags, and the passport itself. Read your first tag covers installing the app and reading one tag.
Open the passport at the photo page and keep it to hand. The passport number, the date of birth and the date of expiry are printed there. You type all three in. The photo page is where you read those details, not where the phone goes. The chip symbol, a small rectangle with a circle inside it, is printed on the cover of an electronic passport. A passport without that symbol carries no chip, and nothing here will read it.
Read a passport
الخطوة 1Open the scan screen
Tap Scan on the home screen. The scan screen opens and reads "Hold tag against the top of your iPhone".
الخطوة 2Hold the passport against your iPhone
Close the passport, rest the top edge of your iPhone flat against the front cover, and keep it still. The antenna sits in the front cover, the back cover or the photo page, depending on the passport. If nothing happens after a few seconds, try the back cover, then the open photo page. This first tap works out what the chip is and then ends, and the scan sheet closes with it. The scan screen now reads "Passport detected" and holds the three fields the chip opens to: Passport number, Date of birth and Date of expiry.
الخطوة 3Enter the passport number
In Passport number, enter the number from the photo page, letters included. The field shows "e.g. PA1234567" until you type.
الخطوة 4Choose the two dates
Tap Date of birth and choose the date printed on the photo page, then do the same for Date of expiry. Each picker opens on a date the app picked to start from, so check the year as well as the day. The expiry date is the one the passport runs out on, not the date it was issued.
الخطوة 5Start the read
Tap Read passport. The button will not start a read while the passport number field is empty.
الخطوة 6Hold the passport against your iPhone again
Hold it to the top of your iPhone and keep it there. The scan sheet counts the read through "Connecting to your passport…", "Unlocking with your details…", "Reading passport data…" and "Almost done…". The Passport screen opens when it finishes.
Tap Close when you have read what you came for.
What the Passport screen shows
The screen is read-only. Rows appear only where the chip answered, so a passport with less on it shows a shorter screen.
The booklet at the top carries the photograph from the chip and the two machine-readable lines as they are printed in the passport. Some passports store the photograph in a format iOS does not read, and the booklet then shows a grey figure in its place. Nothing else on the screen changes.
Under Passport details are the surname, given names, passport number, nationality, issuing state, date of birth, sex and date of expiry.
A Data integrity card appears when the chip carried a security object.
A Signature card appears when the chip held a signature image and your iPhone could display it. Some passports store that image in a format iOS does not read, and then no card appears.
Under Additional details are the extras some passports carry, among them place of birth, address, telephone, profession, issuing authority and date of issue.
The card at the foot names the chip "ePassport" and its family "eMRTD (ISO/IEC 14443-4)". Other chips report more, as the chip support matrix sets out.
What the data integrity check tells you
Where the chip supplied a list of hashes, the app works out its own for the data it read and compares the two. The Data integrity card then reads "Likely untampered" or "Likely tampered", and the same words sit on the booklet at the top of the screen. The card also lists the data groups it checked, the hash it used, and any group that did not match.
The card states what the comparison is worth: "The data groups match the hash list in the chip's security object. That object's own signature isn't verified, so this is not proof the data is unaltered or a check of the passport's authenticity."
If the details do not unlock the passport
The scan screen replaces its instruction, in red, with "Those details didn't unlock the passport. Check them against the photo page and try again." What you typed stays in the fields. Check each field against the photo page, then tap Read passport and hold the passport again.
Enter the passport number character for character, including letters and without spaces.
Check the year on both dates. A date picker left in the wrong decade still reads correctly at a glance.
Try once more with the details unchanged. The same message covers a read that broke off partway, which a steadier second tap often fixes.
If nothing at all happens while you hold the passport, the chip is not answering. If a tag does not scan or write covers that. The first tap can instead read "Tag detected" and open the Tag screen. That means your iPhone reached a chip but did not recognise it as a passport. Hex NFC cannot read that chip as one. A Japanese transit card opens the Transit card screen, and Read a transit card covers those.
What the app keeps
Nothing. The three details unlock the chip for that one read. A note sits under the fields. It says: "These details stay on your device, are used only for this read, and are never stored or sent anywhere."
What the chip hands back is treated the same way. A passport read is never added to your scan history, never exported and never sent anywhere. Tapping Close drops the data with the screen. Seeing it again means reading the passport again. The Passport screen carries the same note at its foot. It reads: "Read from the chip and shown here for this session only: not saved, not sent, and not verified for authenticity."